Broody hens taking shifts?

[lyleg5895]

I have a couple very broody hens sitting on eggs right now. They're displaying normal broody behavior that I am used to. However, I have three or four other hens who seem to be taking shifts sitting on a clutch of eggs. They exhibit all the traits of broodiness except they will swap out periodically. Has anyone seen this before? Should I try to break them of this?

 

[sourland]

Multiple hens sharing a nest works sometimes, but frequently results in cracked or damaged eggs and low percentage hatches.

 

[mcdze]

i agree .. if the broody isnt needed right now its just a problem and eggs will get broken likely as other probably dominant hens kick the broody off to lay .. setting up another couple of nest boxes might help .. but if i dont need a broody i'll pick her up and toss her off the nest gently a couple of times a day and keep the eggs cleaned out .. may take a couple of weeks but she'll snap out of it ...

 

[lyleg5895]

I'm not too worried about losing a few eggs or hatch rates, we get more than enough eggs to cover our needs (and then some) and we have two other broodies sitting on eggs plus a dozen eggs in our incubator. Also, our chickens don't lay in nesting boxes for the most part. A couple do but the rest lay in the corners of the coop. Before someone makes suggestions, I've tried literally every trick in the book to get them to lay in the boxes. They're not having it. So adding boxes won't make a difference. And I don't think kicking hens off the eggs will matter either as they don't sit on them all the time. One will sit for a few hours and then go stretch her legs and then another will immediately come along and take her place. And who ever is sitting on them at the end of the day will sit on them through the night. They're definitely not sitting there to lay as there are no new eggs added to the clutch and they act very broody when I get near them. (Some aggressively so.) Like I said, it's like they're taking shifts.